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Apple introduces new AirTag with longer range and improved findability

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Re: Apple introduces new AirTag with longer range and improved findability

#221

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Chemicals. That’s what they mean by real ingredients: no chemicals. Like orange juice: can be from a chemical powder or real oranges.

This is a good example of how easy it is to fool people if they don’t have their own understanding of how things work. Highlighting this has been a priority in my parenting. My child is having a great time trying to scare friends about the dangers of the chemical dihydrogen monoxide, which is found in a surprisingly large number of manufactured foods.

Right. And wonder bread is awesome for your health.

Re: Apple introduces new AirTag with longer range and improved findability

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have 14 days to return them.

Not all retailers take returns. But the old ones were likely on sale, have been for a while.

He should have bought them directly from Apple then.

Re: Apple introduces new AirTag with longer range and improved findability

#223
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My car got broken into in Oakland, California. Multiple pieces of luggage stolen (yes, my fault for leaving it in the car in the first place). Luckily I had an AirTag that showed the exact location of the stolen items. I called the police but they said they couldn't do anything. Apparently, even if I had the location the thief would have to invite them in. Regardless, I was put on a waiting list, they finally called…

>Apparently, even if I had the location the thief would have to invite them in. I mean, isn't that good? 4th amendment, warrants from a judge, and all that.

Presumably they could easily get a warrant with that information, if they cared to ask.

Re: Apple introduces new AirTag with longer range and improved findability

#224

I tried AirTags once. It beeped non stop on my own possessions. I don’t understand how anyone uses these things.

Generally you tag your home as a trusted location, which eliminates most regular pings. Then you make sure that your Find My shows all of your tags; if you missed enrolling one and it still pings as a "stranger's tag" that can be a cause of confusion. (If you live with someone else, I've heard it is useful that you share your Find My data with each other.)

When actually traveling with your stuff there's a personal comfort question of how comfortable you feel in setting things like hotel rooms as "trusted" so you don't get a lot of pings when you leave things behind intentionally in places like hotel rooms. I think that's my biggest ask for AirTags is an easier way to set explicitly time-bound trusts: trust this exact hotel room until my checkout date; trust this exact office space until the end of this work day.

Re: Apple introduces new AirTag with longer range and improved findability

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My car got broken into in Oakland, California. Multiple pieces of luggage stolen (yes, my fault for leaving it in the car in the first place). Luckily I had an AirTag that showed the exact location of the stolen items. I called the police but they said they couldn't do anything. Apparently, even if I had the location the thief would have to invite them in. Regardless, I was put on a waiting list, they finally called…

[flagged]

I don’t deal with Oakland Police specifically but Oakland itself is a sanctuary city.

Re: Apple introduces new AirTag with longer range and improved findability

#226

Apple AirTag is one of those interesting products that you don’t think you need until you use it. An Apple thing that just works as advertised and is cheap enough that you can keep picking them up at Airports, without the guilty feeling that usually comes with buying high-priced Apple products, such as the Polishing Cloth. And when you order it online, the nice engravings are fun for my daughters. They like it when i…

There's a value in sentimentality that doesn't always reflect in the financial value of a thing.

Re: Apple introduces new AirTag with longer range and improved findability

#227
post #119

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You can buy a third party wallet card that works with the Find My network just like an AirTag.

I'm always tempted to buy one of these but most of them seem to be one time usage, and don't have a way to recharge. That always seems very wasteful to me. Any recommendations for a rechargable but thin one, AirTag itself is too thick for regular wallets.

I have one you can recharge wirelessly. Forget the brand but it’s been working well

Re: Apple introduces new AirTag with longer range and improved findability

#228

Airtag is the reason of why I stil have my favourite hand luggage. I had just sat down on the train from Zurich to Basel. Suddenly, someone sat down in front of me. He looked suspicious, but I didn't pay much attention. Just before the train departed, he picked up what I thought were his belongings and left. Twenty minutes later, already on the way to Basel, I looked toward where I had left my suitcase. It was gone.…

Back in 2011 (!) I went to a wedding in Denia, a medium-sized town on the Mediterranean coast of Spain.

The day after the wedding we went to a restaurant by the sea to have some hangover paella, part of the wedding celebrations. Weddings in Spain are usually 2 or 3 day affairs. Anyway, since we were travelling back to Madrid later that day we left our luggage in the trunk of the car, not visible from the outside. We locked the doors and off for paella.

Or so we thought: some bad guys were jamming the car key frequencies so the car didn’t actually lock. They hit jackpot with my bag: my Canon IXUS camera (I loved that camera), my Kindle 3G, my MacBook Pro and my iPad… with 3G.

When we found out later that day we went to the local Guardia Civil and told them the story. I opened “Find My” on my phone and told them exactly where the bad guys were, all the way in Valencia already.

You should have seen the face of the two-days-shy-from-retiring officer when I told him that my iPad was connected to the internet and broadcasting its location continuously. Remember this was 2011.

So they sent a police car to check out the area and found a suspiciously hot car. They noted it down and did some old-fashioned policing the rest of the summer. Two months later I got a call: they had found them and waited on them to continue stealing using the same MO, until they had a large enough stash that they could be charged with a worse crime.

They had found my bag, my MacBook and my iPad. The smaller items had already been sold on the black market.

It still is one of my favourite hacker stories. I went to court as a witness and retold the whole thing. The look on the judge’s face was also priceless.

Re: Apple introduces new AirTag with longer range and improved findability

#230

The greatest success of AirTags is its silent refutation of the clamoring concern trolling. It's been, what, six years now? The media would pay hand over fist for an airtags stalking story and how many have there actually been?

I mean, i remember a lot of posts about people using them for stalking. It's unclear if this has been addressed or if the concern has been deprioritized, or if apple solved the problem somehow. I mean it was enough of a concern that Android added a "detect airtags" feature to the base android OS.

Apple had its version of "stalking detection" (that equivalent of Android's "detect airtags") from early rollout. (There's a screenshot in the attached article even.) Some of the scrutiny and early complaints was that ecosystem divide that needed Android to also support at least a basic form of that same feature before people would feel safe, and everyone knew that Apple themselves weren't going to build the Android version.
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